By “nobody” he meant “my education commissioner”

2010 July 16

by Unknown Account

A couple of weeks back the major candidates for Governor (and Tim Cahill) got together at WRKO for a gubernatorial debate. Pretty quickly, Charlie Baker raised recent rumors that highly-ranked Patrick Administration officials were toying with the notion of abandoning the MCAS. Patrick’s response was immediate and emphatic. “Nobody is talking about walking away from the MCAS.” More accurately, “NOOOOOBODY is talking about walking away from the MCAS!” in that indignant, wheedling, “Mom! Tell Johnny to quit poking me!” voice that the Governor uses when he’s really worked up about the injustice of something he’s just heard. (If you suspect I’m exaggerating, listen for yourself here: the pertinent exchange takes place at the nine minute mark).

The state’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education will recommend that Massachusetts replace its highly regarded academic standards for English and math with a uniform set of national standards that could ultimately lead to replacing the MCAS exams in those subjects.

So by “NOOOOOBODY,” Governor Patrick apparently meant, “MY COMMISSIONER OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCAAAAAATION.” Either that, or on an extraordinarily important policy matter our Governor has no idea what his top policy-makers are doing. Troubling, either way.

Here’s what Patrick will tell us when he is challenged on both the move away from the highly-successful MCAS, and his prior statement: don’t worry, the new national standards are just as good. Better, even!

If you believe that, I have a clunker to sell you (and I’ll pay in cash!). The highly-regarded Pioneer Institute has done several lengthy studies of the national standards that Governor Patrick and his pal in the White House want to replace the MCAS, with predictable conclusions. The national standards fall short of the MCAS on almost every measure.

Set that aside, though, and assume – against all logic – that the standards emanating from Obamaworld are in fact “just as good as” the MCAS. So what? The quality of our education system in Massachusetts is one of our huge competitive advantages. Why would we wish to give up control of that system and open ourselves to the whims of a national bureaucracy centered in Washington? As the editors of the Boston Globe put it on May 4 of last year (when talk of replacing the MCAS first started to circulate):

Massachusetts stands apart in public education precisely because it created high academic standards, developed an objective measure of student performance and progress through the MCAS test, and required a passing grade in order to graduate. Students, as a result, rank at or near the top of standardized testing not just nationally but on tough international achievement tests in math and science. Any retreat from this strategy would be a profound mistake.

The MCAS is a key – perhaps the key – to the outstanding results Massachusetts schools have achieved over the past decade plus. It is entirely understandable that at a national level there are people seeking to establish a system of standards to achieve similar results, and we in Massachusetts should applaud that. What we should not do is dilute our own standards to help the rest of the nation catch up.

But giving a leg up to the other 49 states is not at all what this is about. This is about union and election politics. There is but a single constituency in Massachusetts that stands four-square against the MCAS: the teachers’ unions. And in a remarkable coincidence, the heftiest of those unions just this week endorsed Governor Patrick for reelection, despite the fact that under his watch, approximately 3,000 Massachusetts teachers have lost their jobs…

… all of which goes a long way toward explaining why Governor Patrick was okay with his education commissioner trotting out a major policy shift that directly contradicts his own unequivocal, emphatic statement to a statewide radio audience just two weeks ago.

The national standards are unambitious, and that is probably an overstatement. They are lowest-common-denominator. MCAS, for all its issues, is widely acknowledged as one of the truly stretch standards to emerge from the NCLB era. Most states — and the federal government — took the path of claiming that things would get a lot better very quickly toward the end of the goal period, counting silently on the goals to be changed or gutted before they became relevant. Massachusetts took the goals seriously, contributing significantly to the anguish, both reasonable and self-serving, over MCAS.

Short answer, if Patrick tries to say that the national standards are just as good as MCAS, he will indeed be lying.

To those opposed to the MCAS – the next time you need to have major surgery do you want a doc who aced the boards (a huge standardized test), or a doc whose mother tells you is very smart but is not a test oriented learner?

I want to know more about the details, and I’ll read the Pioneer report. But let me clear away some of the rhetorical deadwood:

“Abandoning the MCAS” would imply:

1. Dropping the requirement that you pass MCAS to graduate. That’s not being proposed.
2. Stopping the state-mandated tests that guide curriculum and identify kids from K to 12 who need extra help. That’s not being proposed.

Those aspects are at the heart of standards-based education, and I see no one “abandoning” that.

What’s being decided is more along the lines of “should we test understanding of quadralatic equations in the third grade or the fifth grade” or “do we include writing as a skill in English or spread it across the curriculum”?

Those are good discussions for educators, but I highly doubt Tim Cahill knows the first thing about it. Charlie may have an adviser who can discuss curricular options intelligently, but I sense a lot of politics in the response of the two gubernatorial challengers.

No politics in the governor’s failure to disclose that his education commissioner is contemplating a possible move to less rigorous standards, though. Sheesh.

Deciding at what grade level you test for what is not some minor matter, Rick. It is the heart of why MCAS has been a more serious benefit to education in Massachusetts than other NCLB measurement programs have been in other states. Moving to the grade-level standards in the national tests would represent abandoning the MCAS standard by gutting it.

Dan, you may not realize that it is not a problem for a leftist politician to make misleading statements.

Why is anyone surprised that anything coming out of the Obama administration is bad for the country. His aim is to reduce our education system to that of Kenya or lower. In that way, we can count on everyone being equal as far as educational standards are concerned. Kids no longer have to work hard to achieve superiority, a word unknown to Obama. This reflects his apathy in reducing NASA to a third rate cesspool for the rest of the world particularly the Muslim world. MCAS reflects hard work and focus for our young and should not be replaced by the fuzzy thoughts of the extreme left whose only goal is educational enslavement to a warped philosophy.

Dan, I know you might be restrained from commenting in too much detail here, but doesn’t this support the point I made in another thread – that Baker seems willing to define his candidacy based on perceptions of his opponents failings in government?

Not exactly the ringing endorsement of his own candidacy that I expect, either from him or his supporters.

brad, I trust you realize that what you responded does not in the least refute my point. 1) One does not justify misbehavior by pointing to other misbehavior, but also 2) my point was not so much about lying/misleading as about the impunity accorded same.

Rick, Charlie does not need to rely on his advisers on this one; he was part of the original effort to implement the MCAS. It’s one of those issues on which neither passion nor knowledge needs to be manufactured.
Brad, I’m not sure I understand your point. Charlie (and Cahill, for that matter) are running to unseat an incumbent. A big part of that is providing the rationale for the baseline proposition that the incumbent should be replaced. So does he criticize the Governor? Sure. Of course. But he also spends an awful lot of time putting forth his own reform proposals, and talking about both those proposals and his own qualifications.
It is an unavoidable and probably understandable fact that criticism of opponents – or “attacks,” if you must – will get 10 times the news coverage as policy proposals and bio. Go to http://www.charliebaker2010.com. There’s plenty of the stuff you’re looking for there.

If policy proposals were considered truly important, big money would be spent on them. The big money (OPM from the RGA) is spent on attack ads. The fact that policy proposals are hidden at the campaign website shows their value is minimal.

When you are trying to sell something to a customer, do you make the customer jump through hoops to obtain the product or service? Of course not – you serve it to him on a silver platter. Which is what the voters of Massachusetts are being served by Baker. And a pretty thin gruel it is.

“brad, I trust you realize that what you responded does not in the least refute my point.”

Your point was that “leftist politicians” mislead, and clearly implied that “rightist politicians” don’t; otherwise, why use the qualifying term “leftist”?

You original point was that leftist politicians always get a free pass. Mr. 2682 got a free pass in 2004, arguably a much more important free pass than lionization in the “liberal” press. He got that free pass by misleading the American public that Sadaam was involved in 9/11, and that OBL was a target of little value.

I’m a big supporter of MCAS, too. But that doesn’t mean that the specific curricular standards set in 1994 are the be-all, end-all of what kids should be learning when. The knee-jerk defense of those standards (strangely coming from people who enjoy trashing Massachusetts in every other context) strikes me as suspicious, especially when coupled with the misleading implication that this is repealing the graduation requirement or a step away from testing entirely.

Is it impossible to have high standards that are also national standards? Wouldn’t it be good if there was a high national standard (something Bush left out of NCLB) and if Mass. was the best as measured against that standard instead of insisting (like Texas does now) that it only be measured against itself?

I always blanch at the notion that criticism of Massachusetts’ government or one of its elected officials is tantamount to “trashing Massachusetts.” And for people who follow education policy, defense of MCAS is hardly “knee-jerk,” Rick. Those standards were hard-fought and have been defended assiduously for years against repeated attempts by the MTA and its allies to water them down or eliminate them altogether. So when a Governor who has just been endorsed (again) by the MTA, and who the MTA spent millions to help elect in the first instance, suddenly decides to scrap the MCAS in favor of something supposedly “just as good” but which – mysteriously – the MTA seems to have no problem with, folks are entitled to wonder what’s going on.
There is nothing wrong with either the concept of national standards or with using Massachusetts as a model for developing those standards. But tell me, I’m honestly asking – why does Massachusetts need to abandon a system that has served its students so well in order for the rest of the country to catch up?

Why does everyone in favor of MCAS think that MCAS has been successful? Is there a significant difference between pre and post MCAS in terms of schools attended, careers launched, community emlightenment, economic improvement in the state and its workforce? I hear all the time how successful MCAS has been, but I don’t see any measurement statistics that say anything other than more kids are passing the test now than when it was first implemented, or that MA students get higher scores on a test vis-a-vis their nationwide peers. So why the rush to self-congratulation? We don’t hear a whole lot about the kids that can’t/don’t pass the test, probably one of the core social problems in our society and the real meaning of public education, and what goes on in their lives post MCAS.

The teacher’s union will always oppose any suggestion that their performance or lack of it can be measured accurately by what the kids learn. If you hired a piano teacher and your kid learned diddly-squat after a year or so would you continue to employ him/her?

Don: You are right, in that, as far as I know, the record of the MCAS success rests on improved MCAS scores and the results of the NAEP (“the nation’s report card”). Before MCAS, Mass. was in the top third on the NAEP, and now it’s at the top.

Post-national standards, will NAEP still be the gold standard?

As for the MTA, their goals have always been doing away with the MCAS graduation requirement and limiting charter schools. Patrick has never threatened to do away with the graduation requirement, and he pushed through legislation expanding charter schools.

Don- What MCAS has most succeeded at is establishng measurements that have some deptha and some objectivity that can focus attention on issues and missed opportunities that were previously denied or rationalized or misunderstood. The adage goes that what is measured is improved. That appears to be the case broadly.

I guess my eyes just glaze over when people start to talk about MCAS. I don’t know what those issues and missed opportunities are that were previously denied or rationalized or misunderstood or, for me anyway, how improving test scores rectifies those situations (or perhaps more importantly how continuing small gains – Zeno’s paradox? – continue to refine the rectification of those issues.)

The “missed opportunities” are often the C and D students who are quiet and traditionally easy to ignore. I had a kid in that category, and at one point I went to his guidance counselor to ask about his MCAS scores. “We don’t believe in MCAS,” she said, so they hadn’t been analyzed. I asked for copies of his printouts, showing how he answered every question, and hired a tutor to analyze them. She could tell right off the bat that he’d learned next to nothing in 6th grade history – the year a sub covered for a teacher on leave.

A year or so later, his 8th grade MCAS results triggered eligibility for a summer program for at-risk MCAS kids. Instead of sitting in a class of 25 kids daydreaming, he was put in summer classes where four or five kids sat around a table with a teacher who made sure every kid was keeping up. Academically, it was the best thing that ever happened to him and he actually enjoyed it.

It ain’t just the MCAS – or whatever standardized test is used – it’s what educators do with the information.

If your example were how candidates for office defined the success of MCAS, I might have less glazed over eyes. I hear something different from the gubernatorial candidates about the meaning and use of MCAS.

Rick,
Thanks for the link. You’re right – that’s useful information, and a lot of it.
Now look at the date on the cover memo. July 16, 2010. As in last Friday. As in three days ago. Released in the afternoon. To inform members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education prior to a vote that will be taken this Wednesday. As in the day after tomorrow. At a special meeting called for that purpose.
This hardly a month after the Governor denied in the clearest possible terms on a statewide radio broadcast that anyone in his administration was so much as discussing such a move.
Three questions:
(1) Why the rush? If the merits of this switch as so clear and so plain, why not make the case to skeptics – or at least give it the old school try?
(2) Merits of the policy entirely aside, is this how government ought to work? And
(3) Do you think this is how government would work, were there a functional two-party system in Massachusetts?

Patrick ought to know by now that if you release something on a summer Friday afternoon, people will be suspicious.

I haven’t studied the chronology – when the Common Core standards were released, when the BOE assigned the study groups, etc. This does seem like a hurry-up operation, mostly because there’s an Aug. 4 deadline (I believe) for Race to the Top and this is a way to strengthen their application.

I’m not writing off political manipulation. Patrick probably knew there would be political blowback. The Pioneer Institute opposition is no surprise. But I don’t buy the teachers union endorsement scenario, because I’ve seen no indication the MTA cares much about which standards the state uses.

The opportunities are for higher-quality, more effective education. The issues include stuff like teacher burnout, policies and practices promulgated for the conveniance of adults rather than for the interest of students, parents who don’t know how to show constructive interest in their children’s education or some who don’t care, and so on.

I agree, Dirk. I spoke to Paul Reville, sec. of education, today, and he didn’t seem too fired up about this standards stuff. He’d rather talk about teacher burnout, turning around failed schools, the achievement gap, etc.

I think Reville would say it’s absolutely vital that the state have uniform standards, but the differences between these two sets of standards is more political than substantive. Reville, by the way, was a driving force behind the 1993 ed reform act, back when fixing schools was a bipartisan aspiration.

New York has had a system for assuring a high level of learning throughout the state. A Regents system is employed statewide to guarantee acceptable results for those who want to go to college. One has to pass the Regents test regardless of class scores attained. This was a system which I’m not sure is still in place.

Here we have the MCAS test requirement, which is similar. If you don’t pass, you don’t graduate. If you score high enough on the MCAS – as my daughter did – you get a John & Abigail Adams scholarship for free tuition at UMass or a state college.

My favorite line from Charlie’s oped: “Most of the experts in the education community tell me the federal standards are pretty good. They also point out that President Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, is a committed reformer. Both of these things may be true, but unfortunately, in the big picture, neither matters.”

So it doesn’t matter if the proposed standards are good, or that the feds are pushing reform, because the big picture is about getting Charlie Baker elected, so he’s going to distort the issue any he has to in order to gain political advantage.

It’s quite easy to interpret Mr. Baker’s point – “Both of these things may be true, but unfortunately, in the big picture, neither matters” – in two diferent ways. I think how one interprets it reveals as much about the reader as it does about the writer.

One interpretation says Baker doesn’t care about looking at or accepting good federal standards or Duncan’s reform initiatives, that literally they don’t matter and excoriating Patrick is the name of the game.

The other interpretation reads on in Baker’s oped and says well Baker is saying that Federal standards and Duncan’s initiatives do matter, but 1) we already have terrific standards and we shouldn’t rush to toss those and replace then with federally mandated but unproven standards that will have all sorts of testing criteria changes. More to the point, Patrick’s purpose is a money grab, uncertain at best, from the Feds and Rush to the Top funding, which Baker is saying if we do get is going to get spent away on something lost in the miasma of state budget balancing, rather than as Rick’s editorial concludes, a greater increase in resources and policies.

Well, its MCAS, my eyes are glazed over, and hey shouldn’t all control and standards come out of DC? Papa knows best.

It may not matter, but I note that the Common Core Standards are being developed under the auspices of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, not the U.S. Department of Education.

Governors and political appointees are not auspicious as I see it. Don makes an excellent point about sticking with our system even if the replacement were just as good, which it isn’t. The time it takes to promulgate these “rubrics” (a favorite word of the educati) translates into whole years worth of students who get a sustained exposure to neither the old regime nor the new regime. The professional education establishment is a little too addicted to jargony abstractions and to change. The result is that even substantive initiatives of some depth often get structured and implemented like fads. Patrick should grow a pair and tell hiscommissioner and the unions that we are sticking with one of the best-performing accountability systems in the country.

The Mass. standards are updated every 5-6 years anyway, which is probably smart. I wouldn’t want to freeze in perpetuity one set of educrats’ vision of what kids should know. As near as I can tell, nothing would be changed in the state’s accountability system by choosing ELA CC standard 4th 2C over ELA MA standard 4th 2C.

I don’t know. They all look like educatese gobbledy-gook to me. Are they all vaguer, or just some? The folks who went over them one-by-one report that 90 percent of them match the state’s. Are none of the national standards less vague or more rigorous than ours?

I’m sorry to be offering more questions than answers, but I get the feeling more is being made of this decision than the specifics warrant. What should be a professional, technical discussion is being turned into a symbolic political exercise in which endorsing one standard over another is supposed to prove you’re tougher on unions or more proud of the good old Bay State or more committed to excellence.

There is some benefit to accessing the curriculum development work that is done for the broader standards.

For the moment, most or all of the Common Core that has been adopted is parts that are identical, or nearly, to the Massachusetts standards.

Yes, Rick. These standards are typically written in Hoch Eduspeak. Drives me a little crazy.

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